Quarterly earnings reports are continuing to roll in for the S&P 500 — but earnings season never really ends, because about 20% of companies in the benchmark index have fiscal quarters that don’t match the calendar.
As of Friday, 418 companies in the S&P 500 SPX had reported results for fiscal quarters ending May 15 or later. Among those companies, 68% reported increases in quarterly revenue. We screen the results further below. Below is a screen of companies that showed three areas of improvement in their results for fiscal quarters ending May 15 or later:
Among the 418 companies in the S&P 500 being screened, data for gross and operating margins were available from FactSet for the most recent and year-earlier quarters for 262 companies. The margins aren’t available for most companies in the financial sector, because the banking and insurance industries use different measures of profitability.
The top four companies on the list are all operating within industries that were acutely affected by shutdowns in the travel industry at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The travel industry’s sales numbers shot up as restrictions were lifted. What may interest you is that among the top four companies on the list, all reported higher sales for the most recent quarter than 16 quarters earlier in 2019, except for Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS.